Productive day!

I'm feeling pretty relaxed this morning! I'm going away AGAIN for a couple of days and I have to confess that I didn't run around yesterday trying to get a ton of stuff done and that feels AMAZING. 

I still have some paperwork to do, but could it be there's a light at the end of the tunnel? At least to get caught up on all the mundane stuff that has to be done? I doubt it because it seems the more you do, the more administrative stuff needs to be done. Or there is something that needs to be taken care of for the house and I'm trying very hard to keep up to date on that. 

I've also become OCD - OK. I'll admit -- I've just become my true self. 

When I get in the mood and the decluttering has happened in an area, do NOT put anything on the counter! While outdated, my kitchen has not much sitting on the counters or the kitchen table. 

The kitchen is pretty tidy!

The worst part is that I can't leave anything out now. If I come home, I immediately unpack whatever I brought home and put it away. If I have dirty dishes, they immediately go in the dishwasher. There were times when most of the surfaces in that kitchen were covered -- OK -- not the counters, but the kitchen table and the island would be covered with my crap. No more! And you know what? It feels exciting! 

It's easy to unpack stuff for two reasons. I'm doing mindful shopping, which means I don't buy anything that I don't have a home for and second, stuff laying around looks so out of place that you want to put it away - it doesn't matter how busy you are! 

I unload the dishwasher as part of my morning routine. But do you think DH could load his dishes in it? Nope -- they sit on the counter until later in the day. That's one thing I've discovered about men (after talking to my friends) that the husbands want things to look nice, but they cannot multi-task. It's one job to get the dishes to the ktichen and requires a whole different mindset to actually put them away! 

That's one thing I LOVE about Zoom. We have discussions about many things and sometimes our signifcant others are the topic of conversation! 

The bottom line is that if I got this one area tidied up, it's possible to get others done as well and then it'll be a breeze to keep it that way! I'm excited!

So I took my own advice and set aside the customer quilt that was going to get done and loaded my own. 

That is probably the fastest turnaround I've ever done on one of my own quilts! There were zero issues with it (I would HOPE so!) and it turned out super nice. 

My Among the Stars Again quilt

There's the quilting pattern on it. 

The quilting design

And there's the crazy back, but I don't care -- I'm just happy that I got to use up some of the extra bits. It's funny with that print on the left -- there's a rather promininet repeat on it which I never noticed until this photo! The quilt is trimmed and I'm waiting for the binding to come. There is ZERO rush for it. 

The back of the quilt

That took up a great deal of the day as that quilt is HUGE. BUT, not as large as this next one. 

I decided to attempt to get the two borders on my Farmer's Wife quilt. What a job, as this quilt is massive and you had to lug around that quilt top. It was a challenge to measure and I took everything off the cutting table to make it easier. I said EASIER, not easy!

Putting the borders on the Farmer's Wife quilt

But listening to a good audiobook to distract oneself is a good thing and by the end of the day, I had the two borders on the quilt. I think it measures 86" by 106". 

The two borders are on the quilt

That leaves the binding and the backing and to clean out the project box. I had two options for the binding, and have decided to go with the dark green. 

Binding options

But that will have to wait until I'm back next week. Don't worry -- I'll still be blogging and I'm going someplace new, so you can share in our "new" experience. 

The car is packed, something, I don't normally do until the morning I leave, but I'm taking my bike with me and I didn't want to deal with that this morning. So I ended up putting almost everything in the car, but I still have to walk the girls and have breakfast. Thankfully the drive is only one hour!

I have to say that when I put my mind to something, I can get a lot done! Amazing how that hppens, but I also think it's having the space to work properly and something to distract. Anyway, if I could have ONE day a week, like the last couple of days, I'd get so much done! I might actually get caught up! HA!!

On that note, I'm out of here! Before I go, how is the decluttering coming along? It's a long, horrid job, but if you don't start somewhere, it'll never get done. I can't begin to tell you how good it feels to have some tidy spaces in the house and can't wait for the day when the entire place is like that. Every little victory is another weight off my shoulders. My posture will love me for it. 

Speaking of posture, everyone tells you to pull your shoulders back, chin down, lower your shoulders, but people forget a very important step. Your pelvis and your hips. If you tuck your pelvis in and try to align your shoulders with your hip bones, your shoulders automatically go back and I find it's way easier to keep that posture than just do the shoulder thing! I'm trying! 

And Mary -- my new morning routine includes that Vitamin D! Thanks for the encouragmenet!

Have a super day!!!!

Ciao!!!